Quando o silêncio se torna palavra

This article aims at analysing silence as language or manifestation of the unutterable,taking L. Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logicus-Philosophicus and the Holly Scriptures asa starting point. This article defends that silence is not an ‘omission’ or ‘mute’, being,many times, the only way of expressing what, in wittgensteinian terms, cannot be saidbut shown. Some examples can be found in biblical texts, where silence emerges as achallenger and creator. The importance of the word in biblical tradition is undeniable.It is, simultaneously, a means of communication and person – particularly, the personof Jesus Christ. The idea defended in this article is that word and silence are biblicallyequitable, because both transmit, reveal and contain a performative character. I willexemplify the idea through the AKA culture of the pygmies in the Central AfricanRepublic, where silence has a similar role to the word in the Portuguese culture. Ifin Portugal you have to be a ‘man of your word’ in the AKA culture you have do be a‘man of silence’.